Egregious Complaint Against AT&T

Egregious Complaint Against AT&T

For more than one year I have been trying to get AT&T to get their head out of the sand and deliver the services that they very effeciently and promptly bill me over $200 each month...regardless of whether they deliver the underlying services OR NOT!

The incompetence and arrogance of AT&T U-verse borders on criminal. I am 70 years of age and have had the good fortune of being an Executive for three Fortune 500 Companies. Never in my forty-nine years of business have I ever experienced such Corporate arrogance and incompetence as I have in trying to deal with ATT&T U-verse for more than twelve months.

After sending no less than fourteen different Technicians (including Managers, Supervisors, and Network Managers...Inside Techs and Outside Techs) to my home to attempt to repair our chronically sick U-Verse service...without success...then in their infiite "ignorance" they decided to summarily terminate our service. They did so without so much as the courtesy of phone call explaining that they were done trying to make work what we have paid thousands of dollars for and has not worked properly from the beginning.

All the while, for months Technicians, Supervisors, Managers, and the AT&T U-Verse Tier Two Escalation Team was telling me how sorry they were that they had been unable to find a solution and that unlike their predecessors they were going to solve the problems. Then just like their predecessors...they quietly disappeared into the night!!!!

I asked the so called Technical Support Team, on multiple occasions, to communicate with the billing department as to why I wasn't going to pay any more U-Verse bills until AT&T repaired the service. They indicated that they had escalated the matter to the Manager of the Escalation Department and that he would communicate with the Billing Department.

Of course no such communications ever occurred...thus the service termination. So, after insulting us for about one year...we sat for three to four weeks with NO Phone, NO TV, NO Internet. After one courageous AT&T employee fought the good fight...they credited our account in full and turned on all of our "broken U-Verse Services" ! Brilliant!!!!!

If any AT&T Senior Executive worth their salt would care to contact anyone of the 30 to 40 "incompetent and uncaring " AT&T employees that I have delt with during the last 12 to 14 months...they would surly terminate half of them and demote most of the rest. They could begin by contacting "the U-Verse Tier Two Escalation Team" or Department...perhaps they would get a glimpse of what we have experienced. If they were to contact the Escalation Team...if such a Team even exists...they should refer to "escalation code 5381"... along with my account information.

Additionally, though I doubt very seriously that he will be very proud of his actions and inactions someone in authority at a high level of AT&T should sit down with "a certain- Manager of Network Services U-verse" and engage him in a dialogue concerning our situation. This particular Manager was in our home on numerous occasions, both by himself as we'll as with one or more of his Technicians. In addition to telling me that he was the fifth Manager of his Department in the last year and that he was working 14 & 16 hour days six and seven days per week, he also acknowledged the seriousness of our elusive U-Verse problem. He went on to say that if he had to personally come to our home on his day off and completely rewire our home he would make everything we had suffered...right. Then suddenly he stopped returning phone calls, as well as numerous attempts by the AT&T U-Verse Ecalation Team to reach him, and completely disappeared and failed to do any of the things he had promised to do. I hasten to add that he is only one of numeroud so called Managers or Supervisors that have touched our account.

I ask the very simple question...does this sound like the way to properly manage a business? AT&T a multi-billion dollar Corporation cannot deliver the services they promise a customer for more than a year...yet they feel OK about billing that customer thousands of dollars for the same services they cannot and do not deliver.

Though I've given up hope, I somehow pray that someone...just one caring AT&T employee might read this example of abuse, incompetence, and arrogance and somehow get the matter into the hands of a high level Executive where perhaps someone mighty have the courage to do something about an injustice!!

As I write this communications, AT&T still will not respond, will not follow up, and still has been unable to get our U-Verse Service working.

Though I will not make any threats... I'll simply say that I am committed! I will not stand idle and allow a corporate giant such as AT&T take advantage and reek havoc on a customer ...it simply is not right!

Re: Egregious Complaint Against AT&T

Hello, onebang43!

Welcome to the forums, and thank you for your post.

I'm sorry to hear you've been having trouble with your U-verse services. We can get you in touch with our team of U-verse experts, and they will do everything they can to help you out and get this resolved. Just send us a private message by clicking here. Be sure to provide your name, phone number, email address, and the best time to reach you. It might be a good idea to include an alternate phone number, just in case. You can expect a reply within two business days, so keep an eye on the little blue envelope icon at the top right corner of your screen.

In the meantime, please don't hesitate to let me know if you have any other questions or concerns!

Re: Egregious Complaint Against AT&T

I feel your pain. AT&T doesn't want my business either. My phone, internet and TV are off for days and weeks at a time. They make it as inconvenient as possible to report outages. Phone calls are only accepted during office hours and they don't work weekends. Their phone mail system is a real pain

onebang43 wrote:

For more than one year I have been trying to get AT&T to get their head out of the sand and deliver the services that they very effeciently and promptly bill me over $200 each month...regardless of whether they deliver the underlying services OR NOT!

The incompetence and arrogance of AT&T U-verse borders on criminal. I am 70 years of age and have had the good fortune of being an Executive for three Fortune 500 Companies. Never in my forty-nine years of business have I ever experienced such Corporate arrogance and incompetence as I have in trying to deal with ATT&T U-verse for more than twelve months.

After sending no less than fourteen different Technicians (including Managers, Supervisors, and Network Managers...Inside Techs and Outside Techs) to my home to attempt to repair our chronically sick U-Verse service...without success...then in their infiite "ignorance" they decided to summarily terminate our service. They did so without so much as the courtesy of phone call explaining that they were done trying to make work what we have paid thousands of dollars for and has not worked properly from the beginning.

All the while, for months Technicians, Supervisors, Managers, and the AT&T U-Verse Tier Two Escalation Team was telling me how sorry they were that they had been unable to find a solution and that unlike their predecessors they were going to solve the problems. Then just like their predecessors...they quietly disappeared into the night!!!!

I asked the so called Technical Support Team, on multiple occasions, to communicate with the billing department as to why I wasn't going to pay any more U-Verse bills until AT&T repaired the service. They indicated that they had escalated the matter to the Manager of the Escalation Department and that he would communicate with the Billing Department.

Of course no such communications ever occurred...thus the service termination. So, after insulting us for about one year...we sat for three to four weeks with NO Phone, NO TV, NO Internet. After one courageous AT&T employee fought the good fight...they credited our account in full and turned on all of our "broken U-Verse Services" ! Brilliant!!!!!

If any AT&T Senior Executive worth their salt would care to contact anyone of the 30 to 40 "incompetent and uncaring " AT&T employees that I have delt with during the last 12 to 14 months...they would surly terminate half of them and demote most of the rest. They could begin by contacting "the U-Verse Tier Two Escalation Team" or Department...perhaps they would get a glimpse of what we have experienced. If they were to contact the Escalation Team...if such a Team even exists...they should refer to "escalation code 5381"... along with my account information.

Additionally, though I doubt very seriously that he will be very proud of his actions and inactions someone in authority at a high level of AT&T should sit down with "a certain- Manager of Network Services U-verse" and engage him in a dialogue concerning our situation. This particular Manager was in our home on numerous occasions, both by himself as we'll as with one or more of his Technicians. In addition to telling me that he was the fifth Manager of his Department in the last year and that he was working 14 & 16 hour days six and seven days per week, he also acknowledged the seriousness of our elusive U-Verse problem. He went on to say that if he had to personally come to our home on his day off and completely rewire our home he would make everything we had suffered...right. Then suddenly he stopped returning phone calls, as well as numerous attempts by the AT&T U-Verse Ecalation Team to reach him, and completely disappeared and failed to do any of the things he had promised to do. I hasten to add that he is only one of numeroud so called Managers or Supervisors that have touched our account.

I ask the very simple question...does this sound like the way to properly manage a business? AT&T a multi-billion dollar Corporation cannot deliver the services they promise a customer for more than a year...yet they feel OK about billing that customer thousands of dollars for the same services they cannot and do not deliver.

Though I've given up hope, I somehow pray that someone...just one caring AT&T employee might read this example of abuse, incompetence, and arrogance and somehow get the matter into the hands of a high level Executive where perhaps someone mighty have the courage to do something about an injustice!!

As I write this communications, AT&T still will not respond, will not follow up, and still has been unable to get our U-Verse Service working.

Though I will not make any threats... I'll simply say that I am committed! I will not stand idle and allow a corporate giant such as AT&T take advantage and reek havoc on a customer ...it simply is not right!

Signed one very irritated, offended, and hostile U-Verse Customer,

OneBang 43

onebang43 wrote:

For more than one year I have been trying to get AT&T to get their head out of the sand and deliver the services that they very effeciently and promptly bill me over $200 each month...regardless of whether they deliver the underlying services OR NOT!

The incompetence and arrogance of AT&T U-verse borders on criminal. I am 70 years of age and have had the good fortune of being an Executive for three Fortune 500 Companies. Never in my forty-nine years of business have I ever experienced such Corporate arrogance and incompetence as I have in trying to deal with ATT&T U-verse for more than twelve months.

After sending no less than fourteen different Technicians (including Managers, Supervisors, and Network Managers...Inside Techs and Outside Techs) to my home to attempt to repair our chronically sick U-Verse service...without success...then in their infiite "ignorance" they decided to summarily terminate our service. They did so without so much as the courtesy of phone call explaining that they were done trying to make work what we have paid thousands of dollars for and has not worked properly from the beginning.

All the while, for months Technicians, Supervisors, Managers, and the AT&T U-Verse Tier Two Escalation Team was telling me how sorry they were that they had been unable to find a solution and that unlike their predecessors they were going to solve the problems. Then just like their predecessors...they quietly disappeared into the night!!!!

I asked the so called Technical Support Team, on multiple occasions, to communicate with the billing department as to why I wasn't going to pay any more U-Verse bills until AT&T repaired the service. They indicated that they had escalated the matter to the Manager of the Escalation Department and that he would communicate with the Billing Department.

Of course no such communications ever occurred...thus the service termination. So, after insulting us for about one year...we sat for three to four weeks with NO Phone, NO TV, NO Internet. After one courageous AT&T employee fought the good fight...they credited our account in full and turned on all of our "broken U-Verse Services" ! Brilliant!!!!!

If any AT&T Senior Executive worth their salt would care to contact anyone of the 30 to 40 "incompetent and uncaring " AT&T employees that I have delt with during the last 12 to 14 months...they would surly terminate half of them and demote most of the rest. They could begin by contacting "the U-Verse Tier Two Escalation Team" or Department...perhaps they would get a glimpse of what we have experienced. If they were to contact the Escalation Team...if such a Team even exists...they should refer to "escalation code 5381"... along with my account information.

Additionally, though I doubt very seriously that he will be very proud of his actions and inactions someone in authority at a high level of AT&T should sit down with "a certain- Manager of Network Services U-verse" and engage him in a dialogue concerning our situation. This particular Manager was in our home on numerous occasions, both by himself as we'll as with one or more of his Technicians. In addition to telling me that he was the fifth Manager of his Department in the last year and that he was working 14 & 16 hour days six and seven days per week, he also acknowledged the seriousness of our elusive U-Verse problem. He went on to say that if he had to personally come to our home on his day off and completely rewire our home he would make everything we had suffered...right. Then suddenly he stopped returning phone calls, as well as numerous attempts by the AT&T U-Verse Ecalation Team to reach him, and completely disappeared and failed to do any of the things he had promised to do. I hasten to add that he is only one of numeroud so called Managers or Supervisors that have touched our account.

I ask the very simple question...does this sound like the way to properly manage a business? AT&T a multi-billion dollar Corporation cannot deliver the services they promise a customer for more than a year...yet they feel OK about billing that customer thousands of dollars for the same services they cannot and do not deliver.

Though I've given up hope, I somehow pray that someone...just one caring AT&T employee might read this example of abuse, incompetence, and arrogance and somehow get the matter into the hands of a high level Executive where perhaps someone mighty have the courage to do something about an injustice!!

As I write this communications, AT&T still will not respond, will not follow up, and still has been unable to get our U-Verse Service working.

Though I will not make any threats... I'll simply say that I am committed! I will not stand idle and allow a corporate giant such as AT&T take advantage and reek havoc on a customer ...it simply is not right!

Signed one very irritated, offended, and hostile U-Verse Customer,

OneBang 43

. I plan to use Verizon home phone, Dish Net. for TV and Comcast for Internet so I'll never loose all services at once. Good bye AT&T I'm not going to miss you!

Re: Egregious Complaint Against AT&T

I feel your pain. AT&T doesn't want my business either. My phone, internet and TV are off for days and weeks at a time. They make it as inconvenient as possible to report outages. Phone calls are only accepted during office hours and they don't work weekends. Their phone mail system is a real pain

{keep it courteous} Customer service is open M-F 8am - 7pm and Saturday 8am - 5pm in the time zone you are in. Technical support is open 24/7 365 days a year. Technicians are dispatch 7 days a week as well. If you are going to make a false statement, at least make it somewhat believable.

” Auto racing, bull fighting, and mountain climbing are the only real sports … all others are games.”- Ernest Hemingway

Re: Egregious Complaint Against AT&T

Edited to try to add back formatting:

____________________________

I've read through the entirety of your post and I'm with you. I do think you may be complaining about the wrong problem. I don't think it's necessarily the employees that are incompetent, while indeed some are, I think it's the tech support structure. I've only recently had a problem with my ADSL2 (marketted as Uverse) line and I understand tech enough to know where the problem lies. My line was working without incident until a switch or router broke at the C.O. Since then, I've been getting regular outages at somewhat regular intervals. Any intelligent observer would have immediately pointed to the one thing that changed, the switch at the C.O.

I still followed through with their scripts to properly escalate the problem, but I wasn't able to until I finally called and asked for complaints from their phone menu. They had already sent 5 techs to "fix" my line when I knew for a fact that the problem was at their C.O. They even canceled a landline phone tech that was supposed to come fix my alarm line that got disconnected during one of the uverse line tests/fixes. I allowed them to follow their scripts, knowing full well that they can only do that, in order for them to escalate the problem. During that time, I chat with them to find out what I needed to do to help them along with expediting the process so that they can move on. They all say basically the same thing. They can't move on until they continuously run the line tests. They basically can't deviate from their scripts. The incompetence lies at the hand of those that made these scripts so rigid and unyielding that those who can think outside the box must go to great lengths to accomplish anything beyond their basic tasks. They're all really good at those tasks and they've all agreed with me that it was the switch, either with a misconfiguration or faulty replacement equipment. They just couldn't move forward without following their script first. The surveys have made all of them very polite and congenial while performing their tasks and that must be stressful for them to maintain as the customer becomes more irate with each visit. They just can't solve the real problem because they aren't given the power to make intelligent decisions and bypass the script even when they fully understand the problem. The tech support procedure needs to be fixed.

I'm (hopefully) nearing a resolution on my problem. At the very least, with my complaint to management and after figuring out their procedure, I got to a tier 3 tech that understands the problem and has sent the proper tech to look at it at the C.O., and that's actually a real start at attempting to fix the actual problem. This forum is only a band-aid on the broken infrastructure. In the very short time I've looked here, I only see canned responses to PM a customer care specialist, something that should have been available directly from the call center. The fact that you eventually came here after a long ordeal points to that very broken infrastructure that needs to be fixed. All they can do here is attempt to placate an individual customer.

There is no fix here, yet, for what's really broken at AT&T. It requires upper management, maybe a CEO, with decision making powers, to take on the Sisyphean task of overhauling the call centers' tech support structure and overly rigid scripted responses and their phone queue helI. If you expect the employees to do it, you're dreaming. They aren't given the power by management to have any sort of real opinion on the process, or they would have fixed it by now. Employees do grumble about their work when they talk with customers, and what I'm hearing is that management doesn't listen to them or pass on helpful suggestions. This suggest that their immediate management also don't have the power to effect any positive change, another major problem.

AT&T isn't the only company like this. Comcast and Kaiser also have very bad corporate structures for actual customer service. Both employees and customers suffer. They keep employees powerless from actually being able to help customers with anything but the very simplest of problems. That may very well be a majority of the people that do call in for help, but the process breaks down for any complex issue. This is what causes deep rooted hatred from their customer base. When something really breaks down they can't help the customer in a real way. We need to force AT&T to change their support structure to actually provide real, usable customer support. The rigid scripted structure allows them to hire the cheapest possible employee to man their call centers. They don't even need to be technical, since they just need follow the script and do exactly as the script tells them. This is only good for the simplest of support tasks and does not provide a solution when problems deviate from their script.

P.S. You must never say you won't pay. You're always supposed to ask them to credit your bill. You should ask for one years credit, and have them continue to credit your account until the issue is fixed. That may be the only thing they're empowered to do and you may just have to call them each month to keep prodding them. If you ask to credit your account, that means you plan to maintain service. If you say you won't pay, you've basically told them to cancel your account. That's most likely part of their scripted response that they must follow. The wording is important, and they likely have a menu on their screen that specifically differentiate those two terms.

Re: Egregious Complaint Against AT

It’s obvious that I need toclarify the statement about not working on the weekend. Yes, you can call theautomated system and finally talk to a person after navigating a very annoyingphone mail system. The office hours are shortened on the weekend. The repairdepartment doesn't appear to do anything on the weekends unless the problemaffects lots of customers. At least, they won't come to my house on theweekend.

Now for my credentials, I have been acustomer of SBC which is now ATT&T since the late 1960s. I am an electricalengineer with over 30 years of experiences in instrumentation, controls,computers, computer networks and RF equipment so I know what a balun is, how tomanage routers and what 802.11g means.

We have had a long history of service qualityproblems with AT&T. For years it was not uncommon to have a problem after arain and it rains a lot in Houston. There was always a lot of AC hum on analogphones. The solution was to switch pairs in the buried cable until they ran outof good pairs. During this time we had ISDN and later DSL.

Shortly after we switched to U verse, thecable tech ran a "temporary" shunt between the pedestal by my houseand another pedestal five houses down to by-pass the bad underground cable. Thecable department was supposed to come and replace the bad underground cable. Icalled at least three times to check on the status of the cable replacement andwas told that the work was still scheduled. Six months later the county came tomow the utility right of way and the chopped the temporary cable into lots oflittle pieces. Our U verse service was out for several days before anothertemporary shunt was installed. The temporary shut lasted about 6 months beforeit got chopped up and we were out of service for a day or two. The third shuntlasted almost a year because it was buried under an inch or two of dirt.

Three months ago, we started having slowinternet connections and the TV picture would frequently pixilated and freeze.A tech came out and replaced a balun which he said was an old out of datedesign. It looked like that solved the problem until a month later when we lostall U verse. A tech came to the house and spent 4 hours trouble shooting theproblem which he thought was in my house wiring. In the process, he cutconnectors off my coaxial cables, messed up ether net wring in my attic and atthe wall outlets, because he thought that they were part of the U verse wring.At the end of the day, he finally decided that the problem was between my houseand the big junction box for the neighborhood. Several days later anothertechnician came and dug up the wiring at the pedestal and make a temporarysplice. The work was done over a period of two days. When he left there was afour foot wide by three foot deep hole that was left open for almost two weeksbefore someone came and made a permanent splice. All the technicians were verypolite and friendly and seemed sincerely interested in getting my problemsolved, but the first tech was very new to the job and he told me that he wasnew to the job, his training was all done in a lab under ideal conditions andhe did not feel that he was well prepared to troubleshoot difficult problems.

Keep in mind that I have to take off work andstay while the technicians work. All in all this represents almost four days oflost time for me.

Things went well for a month or two then welost U-verse again. When I called on my Verizon cell phone to report theproblem, I got a message that there was a "network" outage in my areaand that no further information was available. We didn't have home phone, TV orinternet for three days. My wife was furious and wanted to dump U verse. Istarted looking into alternatives, but I didn't do anything because I thoughtthat AT&T had gotten things solved. Wrong!! A month and half later therewas another "network" outage. I called AT&T customer service andcomplained. They gave me a $20 credit. Whoopee, an hour of my time is worthmore than that.

I have talked to the phone help peopleseveral times and they always want me to restart the gateway and go through allkinds of other non-sense when I am sure that their signal isn't even getting tomy house. The gateway locks at least once every 60 days so resetting thegateway is the first thing that I do before I call AT&T. Speaking ofgateways, the U verse gate way is really old technology. The 802.11g wirelessis a bottle neck.

Yesterday Icancelled by U-verse phone service and added a Home Connect box to my Verizonwireless account. This will save me about $6 per month. The next step is topull some additional RG-11 so I can switch my internet service to Comcast andmy TV service to Dish Network. By un-bundling, I will save between $60 and $70a month. The real bonus is that I will never lose phone, TV and internet serviceat the same time and in the unlikely event that their service is as bad asU-verse; I can easily switch again.

Re: Egregious Complaint Against AT

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AT&T agents are incompetent and this adversely affects their consumers

I have also had extreme problems with AT&T mobile services. They have continually and must I say erroneously disrupted my service for the last time. They are a corporate giant and I am but a petty consumer. However, numerous small consumers are responsible for the corporate giant that they have become.

On June 1, I called and made an arrangement to make my payment (that was due on May 27th) on June 12th. The agent with whom I spoke said this would be fine. He said this was just fine and that I could call and make this payment or that I could make it online. On June 3, which is today, my service of 4 mobile lines was cut off. I called AT&T to inform that that they had made a mistake which caused hardship for four people. I assumed they could check their records and would cut my service back on again. Never did I dream that I would suffer greatly from their negligence and extreme incompetence.

The customer suppot person conncted me to a manager ant he manager said that there was no documentation of such a payment arrangement.They said all they could see was that I called in on Jun1 and set up an arrangement for June 1. Not what kind of logic is in that??

They saw that I called in but they were sorry they could not help me at all. I was chared $40 reconnection fee as well as $38 overdraft by my bank to pay $294 to get my service restored. I am disabled and suffere anxiety and panic attacks. I had to go to the doctor and my blood pressure was disturbingly high.

AT&T has made numerous other blunders with my account such as debiting money out of my account without my authorization which cost undue hardship in getting my money back.

CUSTOMERS DO NOT TRUST ANYTHING THAT AT&T TELLS YOU AND DO NOT GIVE THEM ANY CHECKING, CREDIT CARD OR DEBIT CARD INFORMATION. TO STORE ON FILE. THEY USE IT WITHOUT PERMISSION.

THE BEST THING TO DO IS TO GET ANOTHER SERVICE PROVIDER AND PUT THEM OUT OF BUSINESS.